Leaked Emails Reveal Disturbing Treatment of Women at Apple

Current and former Apple employees have shared over 50 pages of emails with "Mic" in which women describe sexism they've experienced at the company, and their stories are horrific.

One engineer recalled male coworkers joking about someone coming to rape everyone in the office. After repeated incidents like that one, she wrote in an email to Apple's CEO Tim Cook, "Rape jokes in work chat is basically where I completely draw the limit." He never responded.

Another message sent to the company's Business Conduct email address recounts a meeting in which men complained about their wives and girlfriends being "nags" and the manager said nothing. Another manager once told the same woman to smile.

Yet another employee was asked "You're not technical, are you?" right off the bat when she came in to interview for a new position. She did in fact have technical expertise, but she wasn't hired.

One man at the company complained to several superiors that his colleagues accused him of being on his "Man Period" multiple times.

But the problem is far larger than Apple. According to "Elephant in the Valley," a survey created by women who worked at Kleiner Perkins and Yahoo, 60 percent of women in the tech industry have faced unwanted sexual advances at work, 84 percent have been accused of being overly aggressive, and 66 percent have been excluded from social and networking events because of their gender.

Silicon Valley may be a hotbed of innovation, but when it comes to gender equality, the industry still has a long way to go.